All blog posts
91 posts from 2009 to 2016, with 468 videos (each opens on bbc.co.uk).
2016
HYPERNORMALISATION
Tuesday 11 October 2016
I have a new film going up on iPlayer this Sunday - the 16th. Here’s a background to what the film is about. And a trail. We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. Events keep happening that …
1 video
2014
TRAILER TRASH
Tuesday 9 December 2014
THE FILM'S LAUNCH DATE ON BBC iPLAYER IS NOW 25TH JANUARY 2015 Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories and politicians …
1 video
HAPPIDROME - Part One
Wednesday 22 October 2014
In the battle for Kobane on the Syrian border everyone talks about the enemy - IS - and the frightening ideas that drive them. No-one talks about the Kurdish defenders and what inspires them. But the moment you look into …
7 videos
THE VEGETABLES OF TRUTH
Friday 10 October 2014
This is really just an excuse to show a wonderful film about vegetables. But it is also about how modern science has radically changed in a way that hasn’t been fully understood. How it has gone from promising extraordinary new …
5 videos
NOW THEN
Friday 25 July 2014
If you are an American politician today, as well as an entourage you also have a new, modern addition. You have what's called a "digital tracker". They follow you everywhere with a high-definition video camera, and they are employed by …
10 videos
SUSPICIOUS MINDS
Wednesday 2 April 2014
Nobody trusts anyone in authority today. It is one of the main features of our age. Wherever you look there are lying politicians, crooked bankers, corrupt police officers, cheating journalists and double-dealing media barons, sinister children's entertainers, rotten and greedy …
15 videos
ONE'S PRIVATE LIFE
Sunday 19 January 2014
Lots of people are gripped by the Francois Hollande affair - and they are gripped on two levels. One is a fascination not just with the details - but with the fact that such a plain man can have such …
1 video
2013
WHAT THE FLUCK!
Thursday 5 December 2013
Every month or so there is a new scandal - mass snooping by the NSA, allegations of price-fixing by giant energy companies, major banks corruptly rigging interest rates, giant modern bureaucracies like Serco and G4S ripping off the taxpayer, children's …
14 videos
BUGGER
Thursday 8 August 2013
The recent revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden were fascinating. But they - and all the reactions to them - had one enormous assumption at their heart. That the spies know what they are doing. It is a belief that …
18 videos
MASSIVE ATTACK V ADAM CURTIS
Wednesday 19 June 2013
A LIVE SHOW STARTING IN TWO WEEKS TIME IN MANCHESTER The show is a collaboration between myself and the brilliant Robert del Naja of Massive Attack. What links us is not just cutting stuff up - but an interest in …
1 video
MRS THATCHER - THE GHOST IN THE HOUSE OF WONKS
Friday 26 April 2013
I'm afraid I haven't been posting any stories recently. The reason is that I am in the midst of putting together a live show with Massive Attack. It's a joint production between the BBC and the Manchester Festival. I've had …
1 video
YOU THINK YOU ARE A CONSUMER BUT MAYBE YOU HAVE BEEN CONSUMED
Tuesday 5 March 2013
One of the guiding beliefs of our consuming age is that we are all free and independent individuals. That we can choose to do pretty much what we want, and if we can't then it's bad. But at the same …
3 videos
PARADIABOLICAL
Wednesday 30 January 2013
The West is worried about the rise of Islamism in Africa. There are two big fears - one is that there is a new international terror network that will come and attack Europe and America. The other is that sneaky …
15 videos
2012
HEAVY PETTING
Thursday 20 December 2012
THE POLITICAL USE AND ABUSE OF ANIMALS ON TV Animals have been a central part of television from the very beginning. But over that time the way animals are portrayed on TV has varied enormously - not just in the …
9 videos · 20 comments
SAVE YOUR KISSES FOR ME
Friday 30 November 2012
HOW THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, HAMAS AND THE ISRAELI RIGHT BECAME CO-DEPENDENTS IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP Last week there was yet another cycle of horrific violence in the Gaza strip. This week there are demonstrations in Cairo driven by fears that …
15 videos · 31 comments
WHILE THE BAND PLAYED ON
Wednesday 14 November 2012
I have always been fascinated by the way music can completely change the way you watch film - and how you feel as you watch the images. For the last year or so I have been collecting all sorts of …
2 videos · 20 comments
HE'S BEHIND YOU
Sunday 21 October 2012
HOW COLONEL GADDAFI AND THE WESTERN ESTABLISHMENT TOGETHER CREATED A PANTOMIME WORLD Things come and go in the news cycle like waves of fever. A year ago Colonel Gaddafi was killed and an avalanche of camera phone footage of his …
30 videos · 31 comments
MENTAL CHANNEL NUMBER ONE - THE MAN FROM MARS
Monday 6 August 2012
To celebrate today's successful landing on Mars I thought I would show a film of a man who claimed to have got to Mars a long time ago. He did this back in the late 1950s by communicating telepathically with …
1 video · 53 comments
HOW TO KILL A RATIONAL PEASANT
Saturday 16 June 2012
AMERICA'S DANGEROUS LOVE AFFAIR WITH COUNTERINSURGENCY At the beginning of this year one of the weirdest characters ever to become involved in the present Afghan war died. He was called Jack Idema and he was a brilliant con-man. For a …
9 videos
IF YOU TAKE MY ADVICE - I'D REPRESS THEM
Friday 11 May 2012
Bahrain, along with Syria, has become a symbol of the failure of the Arab Spring to deliver real democracy and freedom across the Arab world. The media in Britain portray a rigid, oppressive almost feudal elite who are stubbornly holding …
8 videos
WHITE NEGRO FOR MAYOR
Tuesday 1 May 2012
This Thursday Londoners will vote to elect a new city mayor, and I thought it would be a good moment to put up a great documentary about how Norman Mailer stood for Mayor of New York in 1969. It is …
1 video
BODYBUILDING AND NATION-BUILDING
Tuesday 27 March 2012
At first sight the search for peace and stability in Iraq, and the search for physical and mental fitness in the extreme contortions of modern Yoga seem to have absolutely nothing in common. But curiously they do. Both the terrible …
9 videos
WHO WOULD GOD VOTE FOR?
Tuesday 6 March 2012
When you bring God into politics very strange things happen. You can see this now in both America and Iran - in their elections and also in the growing confrontation between them. But it wasn't always like this - in …
8 videos · 39 comments
A MILE OR TWO OFF YARMOUTH
Friday 24 February 2012
Both individuals and societies tell themselves stories to simplify and make sense of the messy chaos of reality. It is naive to think that it is possible to live without the protective bubbles these stories create. But sometimes the stories …
11 videos · 45 comments
WE'RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT - AREN'T WE?
Tuesday 31 January 2012
At every moment there are hundreds of thousands of Americans and Europeans floating around the world on "Funships" - superliners like the Costa Concordia that crashed and capsized off the coast of Italy. These ships are extraordinary creations, millions of …
5 videos · 20 comments
THE YEARS OF STAGNATION AND THE POODLES OF POWER
Wednesday 18 January 2012
Everybody is always remarking about how stuck our society feels these days. The music doesn't change, the political parties are all exactly the same, and films and TV dramas are almost always set in the past. We are also stuck …
13 videos
2011
THE GHOSTS IN THE LIVING ROOM
Thursday 22 December 2011
Here is a ghost story for Christmas - it is a brief history of the appearance of ghosts and poltergeists and other spirits on television. Not fictional ghosts - but real ones, or the reports of their appearances, that you …
9 videos
THE BITCH, THE STUD AND THE PRAWN
Thursday 8 December 2011
THE RISE OF GEEZER CAPITALISM IN MODERN BRITAIN It is very difficult to properly see the times you are living through, but it is made more difficult today by the insistence of politicians and commentators that there is no alternative …
9 videos · 51 comments
THE GHOST OF THE COLONELS
Thursday 3 November 2011
In the present crisis over Greece there is a furious argument about whether the Greek people should be allowed to vote on the proposed solution. Many of the voices against this come from the world of finance and economics. They …
2 videos
DREAM ON
Sunday 30 October 2011
HOW THE LEFT GOT TRAPPED INSIDE THEIR OWN HEADS - AND HOW FAIRIES CAN OPEN THE DOOR TO THE FUTURE The protest movement that began with Occupy Wall Street is very clear about what it is against - an international …
11 videos
THE CURSE OF TINA PART TWO
Tuesday 4 October 2011
LEARNING TO HUG Everywhere on television today people hug and burst into tears. It happens in drama a lot - but it has completely taken over factual programmes too. It usually comes at the end when the characters finally realise …
10 videos · 52 comments
THE PERPLEXING POLITICIAN
Monday 19 September 2011
I've found a great party game from the 1920's which I thought might help pass the time at the political party conferences. It is called The Perplexing Politician - A Game Which Has Nothing To Do With Politics . Everyone …
19 comments
THE CURSE OF TINA
Tuesday 13 September 2011
The guiding idea at the heart of today's political system is freedom of choice. The belief that if you apply the ideals of the free market to all sorts of areas in society, people will be liberated from the dead …
12 videos · 68 comments
THE TERRIFYING GANGS OF ENGLAND
Saturday 20 August 2011
In the immediate aftermath of the riots there is a media fascination with the terrifying "feral" youth and the gangs who were behind the looting and the violence. But this fear and fascination with gangs is not new. I want …
2 videos · 24 comments
EVERY DAY IS LIKE SUNDAY
Wednesday 27 July 2011
THE DOWNFALL OF A PRESS BARON As we wait to see whether Rupert Murdoch will fall from power and lose control of News International, I thought I would tell the extraordinary and forgotten story of the dramatic downfall of the …
1 video · 34 comments
BETWEEN THE GUTTER AND THE STARS
Thursday 7 July 2011
Ever since I read the early part of Sharon Osbourne's autobiography I have wanted to make a film about the wonderful, odd culture of the British music industry. She writes vividly about her father who was a legendary music promoter …
3 videos
THE BABY AND THE BAATH WATER
Thursday 16 June 2011
What is happening in Syria feels like one of the last gasps of the age of the military dictators. An old way of running the world is still desperately trying to cling to power, but the underlying feeling in the …
7 videos · 33 comments
ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE
Tuesday 10 May 2011
Here's a slightly longer trail.
1 video · 100 comments
GOODIES AND BADDIES
Monday 28 March 2011
The idea of "humanitarian intervention" which is behind the decision to attack in Libya is one of the central beliefs of our age. It divides people. Some see it as a noble, disinterested use of Western power. Others see it …
10 videos · 56 comments
A IS FOR ATOM
Wednesday 16 March 2011
I am sorry I haven't put anything up recently. I have been busy finishing a new series of films for BBC-2 As a background to the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant I am putting up a film …
1 video · 29 comments
SADAT'S DAT
Monday 21 February 2011
Very few people in the west saw the present revolutions in the Arab world coming. I think one of the main reasons is that we are still locked into a simplified way of looking at the Arab countries - above …
1 video · 16 comments
RUPERT MURDOCH - A PORTRAIT OF SATAN
Sunday 30 January 2011
Rupert Murdoch doesn't like the BBC And sometimes the BBC doesn't seem to like Rupert Murdoch either. Following the principle that you should know your enemy, the BBC has assiduously recorded the relentless rise of Rupert Murdoch and his assault …
8 videos · 58 comments
2010
DAVID DIMBLEBY AND THE PANDAS OF DOOM
Thursday 23 December 2010
Here are two films for the holiday. One is a film made by a young David Dimbleby about a group of 500 British ballroom dancers on an ocean cruise in the summer of 1973. The second film tells the history …
2 videos
WICKED LEAKS
Friday 17 December 2010
Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst who is alleged to have leaked the thousands of state department cables, has often been compared to Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. But I have stumbled on a film in the …
1 video · 83 comments
THE OFFICE PARTY
Wednesday 8 December 2010
Here is a lovely documentary made in 1969 about that year's Christmas office party at a London advertising agency. I've used shots from it in the past - but I've always loved it as a film - so I thought …
1 video · 23 comments
FROM PIGEON TO SUPERMAN AND BACK AGAIN
Tuesday 16 November 2010
I am fascinated by the group David Cameron has set up in No.10, called The Behavioural Insights Unit. I think it is evidence of a massive shift that is just beginning in British politics which will change the way politicians …
6 videos · 82 comments
LADA'S THEME
Thursday 28 October 2010
We live in a time when all elites, whether on the left or the right, believe in rigid rules that say there is no alternative to the present political and economic system. The latest rule is: you cannot have protectionism …
4 videos · 31 comments
MR PINK, MR WHITE AND BOTTOM
Thursday 14 October 2010
Back in 1960 the travel writer James Morris went to Afghanistan. He watched American and Soviet diplomats jockeying for influence, both convinced they could persuade the Afghans to support them in the Cold War. But, wrote Morris, the world the …
4 videos · 43 comments
THE STRANGE DEATH OF POLITICAL ENGLAND
Friday 24 September 2010
Here is a bit of an experiment. I have always wanted to make a series of films which would be like an "emotional history" that conveys what it feels like to live through history as an experience rather than a …
1 video · 74 comments
THE POPE AND THE AXIS OF TERROR
Saturday 11 September 2010
This is the story of the man who tried to kill the previous Pope in 1981 and how in doing so he unwittingly helped create one of the great religious beliefs of our modern age. It is the belief in …
11 videos
MADISON AVENUE
Friday 20 August 2010
EXPERIMENTS IN THE LABORATORY OF CONSUMERISM 1959-67 The widespread fascination with the Mad Men series is far more than just simple nostalgia. It is about how we feel about ourselves and our society today. In Mad Men we watch a …
7 videos
THE HELLS ANGELS TAKE A MINI-BREAK
Friday 6 August 2010
Everyone goes on holiday in Britain. Even Hells Angels. I've just found a wonderful, very funny documentary made in 1973 about a group of British Hells Angels. It's about their daily life and culminates in them going on a weekend …
1 video · 38 comments
LET THEM EAT PLASTIC
Friday 30 July 2010
There are endless books and TV programmes that tell us that the period we have just lived through was the Age of Debt. It was a time when debt was seen as good - an essential element of global stability. …
5 videos · 27 comments
PREDATOR vs ALIENS II
Tuesday 20 July 2010
Last Friday Zac Goldsmith made a dramatic appearance on Channel 4 News. The programme had accused him of not declaring some of his election expenses and he came into the studio live to answer the charges. But Goldsmith seized the …
1 video
Kabul: City Number One - Part 10
Thursday 8 July 2010
TERABYTES AFGHANISTAN I have just got my hands on something wonderful and precious. It is five computer drives containing the unedited rushes of everything shot by the BBC in Afghanistan over the last thirty years. It fills 18 terabytes of …
6 videos
The Undead Henrietta Lacks And Her Immortal Dynasty
Friday 25 June 2010
I have always been fascinated by the story of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta was an African American woman from Baltimore who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Before she died some of her cancerous tissue was taken - without her permission …
1 video
BP AND THE AXIS OF EVIL
Saturday 19 June 2010
BP is accused of destroying the wildlife and coastline of America, but if you look back into history you find that BP did something even worse to America. They gave the world Ayatollah Khomeini. Of course there are many factors …
3 videos · 13 comments
21 Miles Off The Coast of Palestine
Wednesday 2 June 2010
Here is a strange echo from history. It is a documentary made by the BBC in 1973 about the story of the ship, the Exodus. It was the ship full of Jewish refugees - many of them survivors of the …
1 video · 27 comments
Kabul: City Number One - Part 9
Thursday 27 May 2010
1-2-3-4 - WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? On November the 4th last year Paula Loyd, a cultural anthroplogist attached to the US army, was interviewing an Afghan man in a small village in southern Afghanistan. As she asked him about …
6 videos
LA VACHE QUI RIT
Thursday 20 May 2010
A few weeks ago the man who held the key to one of the great mysteries of Western Europe died. He was called Emile Fradin. He was a farmer in France in a village called Glozel near the town of …
1 video · 17 comments
THE RETURN OF THE GNOMES OF ZURICH
Thursday 13 May 2010
Here are some extracts from a fascinating Panorama made in 1968 - about how there are massive spending cuts on the way and asking where they will happen. It is called Where Will the Axe Fall? The Labour government was …
1 video · 11 comments
HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW?
Thursday 29 April 2010
Part One: Democracy on Trial I have always been fascinated by the relationship between our everyday experience of the world and the stories that are made out of it. Every day we experience millions of things, most of them are …
1 video
Kabul: City Number One - Part 8
Monday 5 April 2010
THE WEIRD WORLD OF WAZIRISTAN There is a growing sense in the West that we no longer know what we are fighting for in Afghanistan. The question that is almost never asked is what they are fighting for? What do …
5 videos
GUINEA PIGS UP THE CREEK
Friday 19 March 2010
Here is a lovely fragment of archive I found. It is in the middle of a very serious BBC documentary called "Flightpaths to the Gods" made in 1997 all about the Nazca Lines in the high Peruvian desert. The film …
8 videos
THE ECONOMISTS' NEW CLOTHES
Tuesday 23 February 2010
It is astonishing that everything about the credit crisis is still discussed in the technical terms of economics. Although, as most commentators agree, almost all economists failed to predict the financial crisis that swept through the western economies in 2008 …
1 video
DO PEOPLE HECKLE?
Wednesday 10 February 2010
In 1966 one of the most brilliant American New Wave movie directors - Joseph Strick - made a documentary for the BBC. It was about heckling in the British general election of that year. It is great piece of verite …
1 video
Kabul: City Number One - Part 7
Friday 29 January 2010
ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES - PART ONE Afghanistan didn't just defeat the Soviet army. It reached out and corrupted and corroded the Soviet Union's faith in itself. Above all it destroyed what was left of the dream that communism was the future …
14 videos
THE TRAIN OF TERROR
Tuesday 19 January 2010
Here is an extraordinary piece of film. It is a live outside broadcast of a British army simulation of an attack on a train in Britain. It went out at prime time on a BBC programme called Saturday Night Out. …
1 video
YEMEN - THE RETURN OF OLD GHOSTS
Friday 8 January 2010
What I find so fascinating about the reporting of the War on Terror is the way almost all of it ignores history - as if it is a conflict happening outside time. The Yemen is a case in point. In …
4 videos
2009
Afghanistan Christmas Special: Hound of Hope and Glory
Thursday 17 December 2009
Blue Peter seems to have had rather an obsession with Afghanistan in the 1970s - not only did they take some Afghan hounds to see the King of Afghanistan when he came to visit the Queen of England, but in …
2 videos
It Felt Like a Kiss: The Film
Tuesday 15 December 2009
I've been asked to put the film from the It Felt Like a Kiss show back up. So here it is.
1 video · 21 comments
Kabul: City Number One - Part 6
Friday 4 December 2009
PART SIX - THE WAR ON POP In November 1975 the first rock festival was held in Afghanistan. It was in the gymnasium of Kabul University. Everyone was very excited, especially as the headliners were one of Afghanistan's two prog-rock …
14 videos
Dubai 1975
Monday 30 November 2009
Here is a film made by the BBC in 1975 about Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. At that point he was the ruler's son, but he would become the man who helped create modern Dubai. It is a glimpse …
1 video
Kabul: City Number One - Part 5
Friday 13 November 2009
PART FIVE - INTERCONTINENTAL The King of Afghanistan was called Mohammed Zahir Shah. He believed in modernity. His family had ruled the country for over 150 years and he was driven everywhere in a black chevrolet. Zahir Shah loved to …
12 videos
Kabul: City Number One - Part 4
Wednesday 28 October 2009
The more you dig into the history of the West's relationship to Afghanistan, the stranger and more complicated it gets. In 1978 a group of Afghan marxists overthrew the royal family who had ruled Afghanistan for 150 years. They set …
10 videos
Kabul: City Number One - Part 3
Tuesday 13 October 2009
PART THREE - THE LOST HISTORY OF HELMAND When you look at footage of the fighting in Helmand today everyone assumes it is being played out against an ancient background of villages and fields built over the centuries. This is …
7 videos · 15 comments
KINSHASA: CITY NUMBER TWO
Tuesday 6 October 2009
As well as our relationship with Afghanistan, I am researching the legacy of other European empires - in Africa. We think of those empires as history but actually they still haunt our everyday lives in the strangest of ways. These …
9 videos
KABUL: CITY NUMBER ONE (continued)
Friday 25 September 2009
Part Two 1972 - 1772 In early 1970s the Italian conceptual artist, Alighiero e Boetti often visited the hotel he had bought in Kabul, Number One Hotel. By 1972 it was being used not just by Boetti's friends but by …
4 videos
KABUL: CITY NUMBER ONE
Friday 18 September 2009
I am researching the extraordinary history of the West's relationship to Afghanistan over the past 200 years. It is a very complex, and sometimes weird, story. These are notes on some of the characters and episodes involved. Part One - …
5 videos · 10 comments
It Felt Like a Kiss - The Film
Friday 24 July 2009
This is the whole of the experimental film, It Felt Like a Kiss. It was the basis of the show I did in Manchester with Punchdrunk. The show may well come to London - but probably not till the end …
1 video · 21 comments
It Felt Like a Kiss - Music
Thursday 23 July 2009
This is a list of the music in the film It Felt Like a Kiss and the show. Oh What a Dream - Ruth Brown Camille - From Le Mepris soundtrack - Georges Delerue Let the Four Winds Blow - …
10 comments
It Felt Like a Kiss film - coming soon
Monday 20 July 2009
The It Felt Like a Kiss show finshed last night. Because it was so popular the people who run the Manchester Festival want to bring the show to London - and possibly to Moscow as well. Because of this they …
19 comments
The postcards and the truth drug
Wednesday 17 June 2009
Sodium Pentothal is an anaesthetic. But it was also used by both sides in the Cold War as a truth drug in interrogations. It was made by Abbot Laboratories. They used a very strange way to advertise Pentothal. They sent …
3 comments
The introduction to It Felt Like a Kiss
Wednesday 17 June 2009
It Felt Like A Kiss - the show - will be a walkthrough experience. Groups of nine people will go to an office block in central Manchester. They will then get in a lift. They will step out and then …
1 video
It Felt Like a Kiss - trail
Wednesday 17 June 2009
It Felt Like A Kiss is a show I am doing with Felix Barrett of the theatre company Punchdrunk. It's at the Manchester International Festival and is a co-production between the festival and the BBC. It starts on July 2nd. …
1 video
Into the darkness
Wednesday 17 June 2009
It Felt Like a Kiss started life as an experimental film I made for the BBC last year. My aim was to try and find a more involving and emotional way of doing political journalism on TV. I decided to …
1 video
I found these slides
Wednesday 17 June 2009
I have no idea who the people are, but they wonderfully capture a moment of great confidence in American history. The point at which their nation was rising to supreme power in the world. But we all know that family …
A glimpse inside
Wednesday 17 June 2009
These are some of the books that will be inside: The Hidden Persuaders - Vance Packard Beyond Freedom and Dignity - B F Skinner The Invisible Government - David Wise and Thomas B Ross USA - John Dos Passos Time …
The Medium and the Message
Tuesday 9 June 2009
This is a website expressing my personal views - through a selection of opinionated observations and arguments. I'll be including stories I like, ideas I find fascinating, work in progress and a selection of material from the BBC archives.